Hello everyone! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

I insist on getting outside during my lunch break for a walk as often as I can (even when the weather doesn’t cooperate). Not only does it feel great to move my body, exposing myself to nature, but these walks also let ideas bubble up. There is something about movement while being outside that gets my creative juices flowing.

During one of these walks one day this week, I remembered Halloween was right around the corner. Halloween represents the transition from harvest to winter, a time linked to darkness and death. As you’ve undoubtedly heard me say before, transitions are often scary. Of course, Halloween is no exception, being a time known for playing with and exploring fear.

So this week’s article will focus in on that theme, exploring how “fear” might impact your career and working life.

Enjoy the read, and Happy Halloween! 🧙🏻‍♀️👺🎃👻

Tim

Nightmare On Career Street: Confronting Your Worst Fears

Let’s start off with a question; is there something in your life you’ve wanted to change for a long time, but you’ve not changed it yet? What do you think is holding you back from making that change? After all, the change is something you want, isn’t it?

There is a saying I heard somewhere that sums this up nicely;

“Everyone wants change. But no one wants to be changed.”

So true. I’m certain that every one of us can find an area of our lives that we’d want to improve upon. That is human nature; it’s what keeps us advancing as a species.

But yet, we often find ourselves stuck in ruts, feeling that making the type change we want to make isn’t possible – at least not right now. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after.

I don’t think I need to tell you that “maybe tomorrow” means you will not do it; deep inside, you already know the truth, even if you don’t want to admit it.

So why don’t we make the change we claim to want?

Fear.

There are many faces of fear, many ways for it to show up in your life. Let’s explore a few of the most common – and impactful – faces of fear.

Fear of failing. This is the most obvious one, the one most people think about when thinking about fearing making a change. Society and our education system have conditioned us to avoid failure, so it becomes something that we all seek to avoid. But there is no success without failure. Something is only a failure if you let it stop you from going after your goal. Otherwise, failure is nothing more than a data point, a sign of what won’t work, a lesson that you needed to learn on the way to achieving your goal. No meaningful reward comes without an epic quest that requires you to fail multiple times on the way to victory.
Fear of being judged. We all need to feel that we ‘fit in’ with people around us. This comes from our evolutionary history; in times past, being shunned and excluded from one’s tribe meant likely death. Even though the stakes are not as high today, the psychological response can still be visceral. People around you – and importantly, yourself – have developed a perception of ‘who you are’. By changing aspects of your life, you challenge people’s perception of who you are – including your own. Seeing someone go after their dreams can remind others of their own inaction.
Fear of not being good enough. This is commonly called ‘imposter syndrome’, and is a fear that any successful person has felt at various points in their career. The modern world of work can be incredibly complex to navigate, and there is a lot of uncertainty about how to tackle a project. When people feel uncertain about their ability to deliver, they often feel they don’t belong in their job, that they only got it out of some ‘luck’ and ‘good timing’. This often results in procrastination, as people avoid facing the feeling of inadequacy. The challenge is that this procrastination means that the quality of work will probably suffer, leading to work that isn’t good enough. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fear of the unknown. Our brains are prediction-making machines, and we crave certainty. However, in a complex world where we are tackling increasingly complex problems, there is little certainty to be found. We can’t know how things are going to turn out, and this makes us feel extremely uncomfortable. As a result, we get caught up in endless cycles of planning, trying to foresee every potential roadblock ahead of time, making sure that we will succeed. That isn’t how the world works though. Like Mike Tyson said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” You can only see a bit of the road in front of you, and you’ll see more when you get farther along. Less time planning, more time executing and learning.
Fear of your dream dying. This is such a common face of fear – and one that shows itself to me a lot. It results in a shit-ton of procrastination. This is all about keeping your dreams alive through inaction, not doing the work that you need to do to pivot a part of your life that you want to change. By not doing the work required, you get to keep imagining how great it will be when you make that change, instead of facing up to reality. When you’re looking to try something new, you probably won’t be very good at it (by definition). If you do the work, then you’ll see – right there in front of you – that you aren’t very good. That is scary as hell. Because if you aren’t good at it, why would you bother pursuing that goal? Putting off the work allows you to keep pretending that things will eventually be great, never allowing you to put in the reps you need to put in. Just get started, expecting it won’t be good at first.
Fear of success. This is one that most people don’t understand at all. After all, why would someone be afraid of accomplishing the very thing they’re trying to do? There’s a variety of reasons this happens. For starters, success likely means that you’re now a very different person; you changed significantly along the way. We’ve already touched on the idea that people resist having to confront being a ‘new version’ of themselves; we crave predictably and stability. Successfully changing who you are can force some major disruptions to your life, as it is possible that you’ll need to embrace a different group of peers. Achieving a grand mission also means that you’ll need to discover a new purpose, something new to work towards. Having accomplished to do something meaningful will also likely result in ‘raising the bar’ in terms of future expectations. You and others will now likely expect more from you in the future, which can feel stressful and scary. ‘Expectation escalation’ is a real – and dangerous – thing.

Which of these faces of fear resonated with your situation? There may be more than one. As is so often the case, the first step to recovery is acknowledging the problem. Being AWARE that you are afraid of making a particular change and getting clear about why you feel the fear is an important first step. Once you are aware, you can challenge the stories you tell yourself, and lean in to the fear.

Have you ever noticed how fear and excitement bring about the same bodily sensations? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Use your fear as a guide, allowing it to direct you towards what you should be doing. That you’re scared about it means that you care about it; move towards your fear. You don’t need to jump in with both feet, all at once. You can approach it cautiously, a bit at a time. As you do, you’ll find that maybe it isn’t so bad after all – and then you can lean in a little more, allowing yourself to be a bit more curious. Small steps forward will allow you to build the confidence you need to overcome your fears and make the change you seek to make. But you need to start!

Another great approach to understanding your fears is to practice what Tim Ferriss calls ‘fear setting’. The gist of the exercise is to envision the worst-case scenario of whatever it is you fear doing, evaluate impacts and potential mitigations, and consider the cost of the status quo. Tim gives an excellent TEDTalk to explain the exercise here, as well as some written instructions on the exercise. It is well worth taking the time to do this exercise.

Life is short. Don’t allow your fears to keep you from making meaningful improvements in your life. The biggest rewards come from the most challenging quests, so stop avoiding facing your fear. Allow your fears to guide you towards what you should be doing. Rather than avoiding your fear, lean into them with curiosity.

Your call to action adventure!

A ‘call to adventure’ sounds like much more fun than a ‘call to action’, doesn’t it?

Know what I find scary? The massive number of people that are wasting away their lives at jobs they hate. A full 60% of mid-life professionals report high levels of dissatisfaction with their work. That is NUTS!

It does NOT have to be that way.

You CAN design a work life that provides you a chance to bring your best self to the table, to fully express who you are – and who you are capable of being.

But it won’t happen unless you make it happen.

No one is coming to do it for you. You won’t soon find that dream job; sorry, but that is NOT how it works.

You need to design and build your career, with intention.

I can help. Let’s go!

Book 1-on-1 consultation

Quotation that I have been pondering

I’ve shared this one before, but given this week’s focus on “fear”, I thought I would share this African proverb once again.

“The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.”

There are a couple of important lessons in this proverb. For one, consider incentives. You can’t always trust someone whom you think is protecting you; they may have ulterior motives.

But the bigger takeaway here is that you can live in fear, or you can simply live. Fear can easily hold way too much power and influence in the way you live your life. You should ensure you make the most of the time you have in your one precious life, and one of the best ways to do that is to not live in fear. Learn to lean into the fear and master it.

Journal Prompt

Fear shapes more of people’s lives than they care to admit. This week’s journal prompt will encourage you to consider how you may be allowing a fear to hold you back.

Imagine you wake up one day and your most pressing fear has vanished. How would your day unfold differently? What would you do which you aren’t doing now?

Can you commit to making the smallest, most timid step this week towards conquering that fear? Might it be worth trying?